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Note: Antler wrote "Factory" at age 24 in 1970 while working at a Continental Can
Company factory along the Milwaukee River just north of Milwaukee. His job was
to scoop can lids into long narrow paper bags and cardboard tubes as the lids
came down a chute from a loud machine that punched the lids out of sheets of
aluminum. FACTORY (opening portion of section I I
The machines waited for me. Waited for me to be born and grow young, For the totempoles of my personality to be carved, and the slow pyramid of days To rise around me, to be robbed and forgotten, They waited where I would come to be, a point on earth, The green machines of the factory, the noise of the miraculous machines of the factory, Waited for me to laugh so many times, to fall asleep and rise awake so many times, to see as a child all the people I did not want to be, And for suicide to long for me as the years ran into the mirror disguising itself as I grew old in eyes that grew old As multitudes worked on machines I would work on, worked, ceased to exist, and died, For me they waited, patiently, the machines, all the time in the world, As requiems waited for my ears they waited, As naked magazines waited for my eyes they waited, As I waited for soft machines like mine time zones away from me, unknown to me, face, flesh, all the ways of saying goodbye, While all my possibilities, like hand over hand on a bat to see who bats first, end up choking the air— While all my lives leap into lifeboats shrieking—"You can't afford to kill time while time is killing you!" Before I said Only the religion whose command before all others is Thou Shalt Not Work shall I hosanna, Before I said Not only underground are the minds of men eaten by maggots, Before I said I would rather be dead than sweat at the work of zombies, The machines waited. Now the factory imagines I am there, The clock keeps watching me while it works to see how much time it has left. How much does it get paid? Are coffins the safes where it keeps its cash? I see my shadow working on the shadow of a machine. Everywhere I look I am surrounded by giant machines— Machines that breathe me till I become stale and new windows of meat must be opened. Each year of my name they ran, day and night, Each time I kissed, each time I learned a new word, or name of a color, or how to spell boy, Night, day, without stopping, in the same place running, Running as I learned how to walk, talk, read, count, tell time and every time I ever ran alone pretending to be a wild black stallion, They ran as I thought never (my eyes in the clouds) would my future corpse need to be buried premature in slavery of exchange to contemplate the leisure vacations of photosynthesis and limnology and the retirement of tombstone inscriptions into veils that veronica the earth, They ran, and I never heard them, never stopped to hear them coming, All the times walking to school and back, All the times playing sick to stay home and have fun, All the summers of my summer vacations I never once thought I'd live to sacrifice my dwindling fleshbloom packaging the finishing touches on America's decay For money to earn me so I can write in the future about what I am now, then am no longer, Shortening the lifespan of planet for 6¢ a minute so I can elegize the lifespan of beauty and my life, So I can say before my parents ever met machines were blaring the same hysterical noise, So I can say they were waiting for me every mouthful of food I swallowed, So I can say they were waiting for me every time paper eyes of paper nakedness watched my hands perform the ritual of dreams, So I can say each second so many die so many are born, like rapid snapping of fingers, snap, snap, snap you live, snap you die, snap you live and die again! Each day of my life is my life! So, winding my watch before work with the galaxies of my fingerprints— each twist of my lifeline a dungeon of ticks— I wondered was it for this my hide'n'seek Huckleberryhood? And pondered how each day goes to its grave single file without the corpse of what I might have been, Yet the hour hand is so slow no one will ever see it move. Each of the great works never written By those who work in factories so they can write words, what they say will be great words, Does not care, does not wait to be written— At the end of a day's work he who left his mind eight hours at his writing desk for the repugnance of metal on metal, noise on noise, Sits down with his pen as if he had already written the great words of his dreams. His feet feel like nursing homes for wheelchairs, His ears an inferno of crickets, And he says—"I feel like the grave of someone I loved" ... IX (excerpt)
I should be paid for discovering America is committing suicide with factories! I should be paid for wondering if I'm only a defect in the mass-production of zombies! I should be paid for pondering if God packages universes the way I package lids! I should be paid for combering if the sea ever gets tired of making the same sound! I should be paid for writing The Infinite Autobiography of This Spot Through Eternity! I should be paid to stand on this spot before America was discovered! What do I win for singing—"No one can stand where I stand because my body is in the way"? I should be paid to memorize the epic of every split-second! I should be paid for hearing the chorus of fliptops popped all over the globe this instant! I should be paid for turning fished-out cans upsidedown to count how many years falling leaves pour out! How much do I get for watching the sunrise? How much do I get for sleeping under the stars? How much do I get for exploring the undiscovered oceans and continents and claiming them in Mescaline's name? How much do these words want to work in my lines? Is this poem worth more than a skyscraper? This book worth more moolah than ever made? I should be paid for listening to music better than virtuosos play! I should be paid to play Kick the Can or tie cans to the newlydead's hearse! I should be paid to fly a kite underground careful not to snare it in the roots of trees! What do I get for sisyphusing my face? What do I get for glutting my sorrow on the wealth of the globèd peonies? What do I get for knowing the hunting and gathering way of life represents 99% man's time on earth? Or for knowing the slaves who built the pyramids carved graffiti praising Pharaoh on the giant blocks of stone? What do I get for knowing a billion dollar bills placed end to end would extend four times round the world and if you picked them up one per second it'd take 134 years? I should be rich for knowing the answers to so many $64,000 Questions! I should be rich for crying the Tarzan Cry that brings the skeletons of extinction to the rescue! ... |
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